CRYPTOGAMIA ALG2E. 987 



The whole plant confifts of a quaking gelatinous 

 iubftance, flipping through the fingers like 

 Frog-fpawn, The color is variable, either pur- 

 ple, moufe-color'd, green, blue, or black. The 

 length from one to three or four inches. 



It grows in clufters compos'd of branched, foft, 

 fiimfy ftalks, moving with the water. Thefe 

 ftalks and branches appear like necklaces or 

 ftrings of fmall beads, being furrounded, or 

 ftrung as it were, with numerous gelatinous 

 globules, placed almoft contiguous to each 

 other. In thefe globules, at a proper feafon, 

 may be feen dark fpecks, which are the frudi- 

 fications. 



Under the microfcope the plant exhibits a dif- 

 ferent view. The ftalks then appear to be 

 fiftular and pellucid -, and the globules which 

 furround them, when highly magnified, are 

 difcovered to be balls, or rather whirls of very- 

 minute, branched, capillary threads, to which 

 are affix'd fmall yellow capfules or ber- 

 ries, full of brown feeds. This fingular kind 

 of frudification, firft difcover'd by Mr. BuU- 

 ner, determined the celebrated Mr. fFeis, in his 

 Treatife on the Plants cryptogamica^ publifhed 

 at Gottingen in the year 1770, to rank this 

 plant under the genus of CH ARA. 



This 



